The Tipping Point of the Campaign

We are at a very interesting point in the 2008 Presidential Election.

John McCain received a significant boost from his Palinization both in the popular vote and the estimated electoral vote count. That bump seems to have subsided to the point that McCain and Obama are now virtually tied in total support and the all important electoral vote totals.

Is this the top for McCain/Palin and all/most of the swing states will start turning shades of Blue or will they continue to keep the Obama camp off-balance and lock down the vote of everyone who wants a seemingly known commodity?

Will Obama/Biden continue to lose the seemingly insurmountable structural lead they had (Economy, Iraq, 8 yrs of Bush, etc.) and become a classic case study on what not to do in an election or will their message focused more on issues than opponent be embraced once again by the electorate and turn the country into a lot of purple states?

It definitely could go either way and a major gaff (4 debates starting Sept 26th) or uncovered dirt could swing voters significantly one way or the other.

However, there are some signs that momentum is headed in one direction.

The media is starting to hit at John McCain and Sarah Palin for a relatively steady diet of truth-stretching on Barack Obama and themselves. Denials as John McCain did on "The View" will buy you some time with the public, but after a while, the cumulative effect has a impact, like jabs in a boxing match. The nice wax job, er, I mean shine, that was on the McCain-Palin ticket after the Convention, has started to wear off and that is most likely to continue.

In August, Barack Obama raised $66 Million in August, an all-time record for a month and almost the entire amount of $85 Million that John McCain will get for the remainder of the Campaign from Public Financing. Yet, at least in Pennsylvania (a battleground state) we are still seeing more TV time ads from McCain. There are 2 facts that are very important here: Barack Obama will wind up raising more money than John McCain will get from Public Financing, and since the Conventions, Obama has probably spent less than McCain on advertising. That either means his campaign will have a lot more money to spend than McCain in the final weeks of the election and/or they are spending a lot more on the ground game, which tends to be the deciding factor in most close states.

It would not surprise me at all if the electoral vote totals seen at Electoral-Vote.com or other websites have McCains numbers dropping from this point until Election Day.

LATE UPDATE - According to Gallup and Zogby, the momentum has already shifted to Obama as he leads in both polls 47%-45%. Gallup shows the day by day polling numbers along a dateline so you can see the impact of the Conventions (although it doesn't show pre-Democratic Convention numbers). Zogby is just